Money and the narrative self. <\/p>\n
For the first twenty years, I typically just didn’t have any money, except what came from ‘summer jobs’ and the like, which mainly went into the lone luxury of just having a car. <\/p>\n
I went up to Portland the first time, without a car, or a job, or any medication, or any money at all, and then drifted back down the coast to the ancestral home, which was by then vacant, and broke into it, and slept there for a couple of months. <\/p>\n
Then I got busted for that, which resulted in the Commander’s magnanimous offer to send me on down to real college, on a kind of shitty quasi-scholarship, years after I was denied the opportunity to fund that dream for myself. Really, what the hell else could he do about me?<\/p>\n
I flunked out, for reasons rooted in mental health and complete societal disaffection. <\/p>\n
It didn’t help that I was still, incredibly, unmedicated, but let’s not dwell too long on that. <\/p>\n
I went back to Portland.<\/p>\n
I walked, and the rain soaked in through the holes in my soles. <\/p>\n
Rock bottom. <\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
But look at Liony go! I … bootstrapped! up from there. Ain’tcha proud of me? Sure you are. <\/p>\n
I got myself into real college again under my own steam this time, and I got my first lowly but real job, and then, fucking finally, got my own damn self treated, at 23 years of age, even though I still looked 15. <\/p>\n
I remember cracking a textbook in a tiny little diner, sucking down cheap eggs sunny side up, and having the short order cook and manager be very concerned that I was a truant. From high school, or hell, junior high. Because I looked exactly like one. <\/p>\n
Things slowly improved. From 23 to the edge of retirement, I made money in the most traditional and annoying and stupid way–I was an employee. Not a great one, but usually an acceptably good one, navigating the politics of it and cloaking my extreme anti-authoritarianism and hatred for bosses well enough to get by from contract to contract. <\/p>\n
That ended badly when I was found out to be what I actually am at last, and I took both barrels of the banhammer shotgun to the face. <\/p>\n
I went back to the non-ancestral home of my own making, and this time I didn’t have to break in. Decades of pretending to be a good boy had at least earned me a key to the sagging front door.<\/p>\n
In spite of that marginal advantage, I was spent, and a complete mess, and did nothing but shiver, and fail to sleep, for months. <\/p>\n
A well-meaning dear one, a bootstrap cultist in the commander’s own tradition, tried to get me a web developing gig at one point, but I was not ready for it, and when it turned out to be for a virulently anti-union bunch of bean counters, that crashed and burned anyway. <\/p>\n
I cashed in the retirement plan, taking a brutal tax hit, to get by, and to try and craft a way to truly thrive for the first time–and by thrive, in the present context, I’m just talking about financially. <\/p>\n
Even though it galled me, I did consider various approaches to becoming an employee again, but They were having none of it. In spite of my stellar skills in the area of being interviewed and putting the best face on, the stink of anarchic rebellion was still on me, and they can accurately smell it from a mile away. Fair enough. There’s no longer any percentage in pretending to be what I never was. <\/p>\n
I invested in cameras and started a YouTube channel, with high hopes. After several years I’m still sitting at 71 subscribers, well below the monetization threshold. <\/p>\n
I invested a few thousand more in coffee entrepreneurship, but never quite managed to break even, and now that’s over with too. <\/p>\n
I scrape on by with the social ‘security’, but in truth the balance on 2 of the 5 cards continues to rise just a little month by month regardless. With the new inflationary prices on gas and food, it feels inevitable, regardless of how bitterly frugal I can manage to be. <\/p>\n
So, that longish story short, I have to find some brand new way to cover the gap between income and expenses, between grubstake generation and the most penny-pinching methods of stake allocation. <\/p>\n
The only thing I can imagine doing is Monetizing my Creativity somehow. <\/p>\n
I am<\/em> still abundantly creative, Allah be praised, and I am no longer quite so concerned about remaining spotlessly and virtuously pure when it comes to keeping my creations out of the filthy gutter of commerce at all costs. <\/p>\n A man, saith the right-wing Saint Clint, has got to know his limitations.<\/p>\n I don’t know much, but I do know mine, and that which does not kill me makes me stronger. <\/p>\n All this shit I’ve been talking lately is about what those strengths are, and what good they could possibly <\/p>\n Do me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Money and the narrative self. For the first twenty years, I typically just didn’t have any money, except what came from ‘summer jobs’ and the like, which mainly went into the lone luxury of just having a car. I went up to Portland the first time, without a car, or a job, or any medication, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10642,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10639\/revisions\/10642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}